Mine Enemy
by Ikonopeiston
Summary: What happens when a Deathseeker misses his chance?


8/29/06

The characters and setting of this story are the sole property of Square-Enix. I am responsible for what I have done with them.

A/N - I am grateful to two persons for comments they made which led me to this idea. They know who they are.

**Mine Enemy **

The tall man sitting in the inglenook, wearing the shabby remnants of a Crusader Uniform, crouched over his glass as though to protect it from the snatching hands of those near him. Not that any other patrons were sitting very near him or ever did. Those who used this tavern as their regular stop-over had learned to avoid disturbing the man with the sad face and the haunted eyes unless they wanted to feel the edge of an uncommonly sharp tongue. He was not a stranger; all of the soldiers and most of the civilians recognized him immediately. There was only one man on the planet who bore on his left side machina limbs.

He was Nooj, the Undying, the Deathseeker, the one who had been torn apart by Sin, the great nemesis and had yet lived to pursue the enemy again. He was unique among Warriors on the world of Spira, a man reared to follow a single profession who had lost well nigh half his body and who was now more dedicated to that career than ever. He was the solitary huntsman, eager to come to grips with his foe again and this time prevail or die in the attempt.

The hum of conversation rose and fell with the monotonous repetition of a swarm of bees, punctuated now and they by a sharp argument quickly settled. The drowsy sound was soothing and restful, creating a background of gray noise which blocked and absorbed any disturbances.

The quiet was splinted suddenly by the entry of a young man who catapulted from the fierce light of the outside into the fuggy dimness of the tavern like a blitz ball in the last play of a meet. His incoherent shouts preceded him, drawing the attention of even the tall man by the fire.

"He's dead! The Calm ..." the boy's breath failed to keep pace with his need to speak. He bent forward, hands on his knees, in the effort to refill his lungs, gaping like a fish on dry land.

Those nearest the door clustered around the intruder and on quick-thinking man scooped up a mug of ale and threw it in the young man's face. After spluttering briefly, he managed to choke out his news.

"He's dead! Sin is dead! We've got us a Calm!"

"So the little girl did it, did she?" The bartender chuckled.

"Naw. It had to be that boy with the kids Guardianing him or ..." an old man drawled.

The messenger waved his hands, frantic to regain attention. "It was the girl, Braska's little girl. The one who had Auron with her. She killed Sin and now it's the Calm. Give me a drink!"

Several noggins of beer and ale were passed to him as the hearers began firing questions, speaking one another in their excitement and curiosity.

Back in the chimney corner, the man called Nooj heard the news and gripped his glass ever more tightly, his face an unreadable mask behind which his eyes flared with rage and frustration.

He drew a deep breath and carefully released the pressure on the glass, gently setting it to one side. He painfully rose to his full height, using a metal cane as a lever and stood for a brief time composing himself before limping from the tavern, unnoticed by the chattering crowd at the bar.

-X-

As he began his trek down the Highroad, he was heading nowhere because he no longer had anywhere to go . He had been journeying toward a long deferred rendezvous with a creature know as Sin. It was a pilgrimage begun in his youth and now it would never be completed and he was bereft. The entire purpose of his life had been destroyed; there was nothing left for him.

The road stretched ahead like a treadmill to nothingness. There was no one in sight and heat shimmered above the broken scraps of paving which remained after the passage of so many armies and so many refugees. There had been no opportunity for repairs or public works in a long time. All the resources of the world had been pressed into the battles against Sin and the struggle to keep enough of the populace alive to reseed the cities and villages. Now it was over - this effort and the planet would have to re-organize its priorities again.

As would he. He was in his twenties and had once been a strong man, trained and conditioned for the profession of Warrior. Now, what was he and what was he to do? The cruelty of the disaster visited upon him almost two years ago had left him broken, unfit for any other career and not fully capable of the one which had just been snatched from him.

Being a Deathseeker meant living according to a rigidly specific philosophy. Nooj had lived in this manner for almost as long as he had lived at all. From the age of six, he had known his life would be short; his first encounter with Sin - the one which had killed his parents and left him changed in invisible but irrevocable ways - had convinced him of that. Nothing which had happened in the intervening years had altered his feelings or his conviction that he owed the universe a death.

He owed the world a death and he had tried to pay that debt. Over the years since that time he had devoted himself to the objective of becoming a Warrior so that he could place himself on the field of war and do battle with his eternal enemy. When he had finally achieved that goal and met Sin as a man not a boy, he had failed in both his aims. He did not kill Sin and he did not die before the onslaught of the beast. Forcing himself to live in spite of his injuries, he had continued his search for another encounter only to discover the great foe to be more elusive than he had expected. Now this! Sin was dead, destroyed and with that destruction came the end of his purpose. There was no longer any reason for him to breathe, to see, to hear, to think.

He gradually became aware of another figure keeping pace with his steps.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

The pale-haired man looked up from behind his hunched shoulder. "I'm an old friend of yours. We've been together for quite a while now."

Nooj turned his full attention on his companion. "I feel as though I should know you but I'm not quite sure. Can you remind me where we met?"

The shorter man danced a little caper in the dust and grinned maliciously. "I could but I don't think I will. Come on, we've got a long way to walk and nothing better to do so I'll give you hints and you can guess. You on?"

"I don't like games of that sort. And where do you think we're going? I don't have anywhere in particular in mind."

"That's another game we can play. Where are we going and what will we do when we get there?" The blond sang the last words in a childish, mocking, high-pitched voice.

"Go your own way. I prefer my own company to yours." The captain snarled impatiently.

"There's your first clue. I can't go my own way. My way is yours. What do you think of that?"

"I think you are a fool and an damned impertinent one. I've told you I won't play your games, so get out of my sight."

"Very well." The other figure vanished with neither fuss nor noise.

Nooj stood, astonished, in the middle of the road. He thought he would have fallen had it not been for the supporting balance of his cane. Was he dreaming as he walked, hallucinating? Had the irritating imp been a product of his distraught realization that he had no longer any purpose for living nor convenient manner of dying? Maybe he should get out of the sun bearing so relentlessly on his head and sit under that grove of trees nearby. Yes. That was the proper thing to do. The news of Sin's death and the heat had been too much after his long journey on the yesterday. He needed to rest.

He made his way into the copse which had sprung up alongside the river and painfully lowered himself onto a small hillock covered with moss conveniently placed so that he could lean back against a large smooth tree trunk. After stretching out the prosthetic leg, he bent the remaining one up so that he could reach the aching calf muscle and massage the cramping away. Since he was alone and had no one to impress with his stoicism, he permitted himself a deep groan as his fingers encountered the knotted spasm in his limb. For one of the few times in his life, he regretted that he was too proud to carry pain relievers and he cursed himself for throwing away the anodynes Baralai had made for him. Why had he done that? The reason kept eluding him, just out of the reach of his memory. There must have been a reason; he did not do things for caprice.

As he continued to rub at the painful places, he felt himself no longer solitaire. With no particular sense of surprise, he turned his head and saw the short blond man leaning against the other side of the tree.

"So you're back. I had a feeling you would be." Nooj spoke in a tone of resignation.   
"You are a hard companion to lose."

"Right now, I'm impossible for you to lose," the boyish figure answered. "Are you hurting?"

Nooj nodded in spite of himself. "I am feeling old and broken."

"You're only in your early twenties, right? How can you feel old?"

"I've lived a lot in those years and flesh is not as durable as metal. Are you ever going to introduce yourself?"

"I haven't made up my mind. I think it would do you more good to reason out who I am. You're so proud of your rational mind and so sure of your sanity. Go on, work it out. It's a dark and brilliant secret, filled with fireworks and fear." The stranger grinned maliciously.

Nooj closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the trunk. "I know you now. But I don't know your name. You are a parasite, an infection. I want you gone!"

"I thought you would know me finally." The other jumped to his feet and bowed deeply before Nooj, his pale hair sweeping the ground at the extravagance of his gesture. "May I introduce myself, sir? I am the eternal lover, the deathless devotee, the immortal - Shuyin!"

"Oh sit down and shut up, Shuyin. All of this is a hallucination so what do you matter?"

The transparent eyes of the boy glazed into panes of ice and he snarled. "Illusion, eh? You want me to take over what passes for a personality with you and show you what's an illusion? You think you can fight me. I own you and you know it."

Nooj felt something - he could not identify what - slipping from his grasp and he collapsed, sliding to one side and and into a shadowland which he did not understand. His muscles no longer obeyed him and the prosthetic limbs dragged like the dead artifacts of metal and ceramic they were. Strange images cluttered his mind - the dancing figure of a long-haired woman, the sound of a song he had never heard before, then the explosion of passion as he joined with the woman in the act of love.

"Now. Thanks for the use of your body. Is it still an illusion?"

Dazed and shaken, Nooj pushed himself upright, noting the physical evidence of the experience and disgusted with himself. "What are you playing at? What did you do in the cave?"

Shuyin chortled, pointing a finger at his prey. "I took you, took you like a ripe apple on the lowest branch of the tree. Oh, you were so easy. You fancy yourself a great man, eager to make the 'ultimate sacrifice' for the betterment of Spira. So strong, so proud, so noble. So stupid, so self-absorbed, so lost. You don't know what you are, do you?" He capered, turning cartwheels and spinning on his heel.

Flushing, Nooj grated, "I think you are going to tell me."

"You're weak and helpless. You don't have the guts to live in this world anymore. You drag yourself across the continent whining about your losses and your daring. What you're saying is 'Pity me. Pity me. I've given so much and plan to give so much more. Now, pity me. Admire me. Worship me.'"

Nooj struggled to his feet and raised his cane to strike his tormentor. "Liar! Fool! Traitor! You sneaked inside me when I was off guard. Now you think you can control your better."

"Think? I know I can control you; I just did. Didn't you notice? Want me to do it again?"

Defeated, Nooj leaned heavily on the cane and shook his head. "No. I won't fight you anymore. Leave me alone."

It was Shuyin's turn to slump. "I can't leave you alone. Not until I have done what I must. Let's make peace of a sort. There's room for both of us."

"If we must." The Crusader spoke with a resigned air. "I seem to have grown suddenly old. Have your years been added to my own? I wasn't this tired before Sin was destroyed."

"It may be my years but I think it is that you have lost your impetus. You no longer have any reason to continue. And you can't die yet. I won't let you."

Nooj's teeth ground together silently as he snatched the dagger from his belt and turned it on his own breast, only to find his motion arrested before the point could reach its objective.

He struggled for a moment then, panting, returned the blade to its sheath. "I just have to catch you off guard. You won't always be alert."

The unsent one smiled palely. "No, you have it backward. I can maintain my guard forever. You are the one who will tire for you are made of flesh - mostly."

There was no rebuttal Nooj could make to what he was forced to recognize as the truth, so he turned away from his traveling companion and doggedly limped on down the dusty road, hoping the other would soon become bored and go back to wherever he lodged when not manifesting himself. The concept of a parasitic creature infesting his body was almost unbearable but even that was better than the presence of the creature walking alongside him. If he had thought this experience was other than a fantasy, he would have gone mad - he thought. Hurling the body the monster claimed to share over a cliff ought to be possible. Not even a controlling entity could negate gravity.

"Well, what are you going to do now that you no longer have Sin to focus on?" Shuyin tossed out the question as thought it were only another casual subject to occupy their time. "Now that you can't exact proper retaliation for your maiming, what will you do?"

Nooj tightened his self-control. "I don't know. I haven't had time to think about it. Any suggestions?"

The other let his shape fade a little into a vague pattern of pyre-flies. He had his own agenda but was not inclined to share it with his puppet. Trust was not a factor in such a relationship.

"What do you suppose the rest of the Crusaders are doing now that their reason to exist is no more?" he queried looking up slyly at the taller man.

"I don't know. I haven't kept in touch with them since ..."

"Since you and I met? The Crimson Squad thing? That must have hurt to be betrayed like that."

"Why are you pretending sympathy? It gave you your chance." Nooj was bitter and stumbled slightly in his pace.

"Forget that. You've got to do something; you can't keep walking aimlessly across the continent. I guess you can always see if what's left of Yevon will have you." Shuyin skipped agilely aside as the cane descended where had been seconds before.

"Yevon! I will die before I will serve that festering heap of liars!"

"It seems to me that protestations of preferring death come too easily from you and are essentially meaningless. No, don't try to hit me again. You can't and you'll make a fool of yourself trying. Just concentrate on what you're going to do now until I'm done with you."

"Why must I decide immediately? And why must we talk about me? Answer a question yourself. Why did you seize my body to be your vehicle? What do you need with a living body anyway?"

"I have my reasons and you didn't want to use this one anyway. At least that's what you keep claiming. You think nobody listens when you go on and on about how much you want to die? I notice you managed to miss a number of opportunities before I moved in. If you had really wanted to stop living, you could have done so any time you chose. No, my self-pitying friend, you can't fool me. I'm inside you, all of you, and that includes your mind. You have no private sanctums anymore and you are going to have to face who and what you are at the core. You have presented yourself as one who has sacrificed so much for the benefit of the world, who has been so brave, so dedicated. Hear me, you fraud. You shot your friends - in the back - and you've extorted every drop of admiration and priviledge from your mutilations, using them to excuse your arrogance and cruelty. What sort of a hero does that make you?"

"What do you want from me?" Nooj howled, throwing back his head and staring blindly into the heavens.

"Some honesty. You are my donkey for now; I can't easily change mounts. So be a good ass and stop lying about yourself. Show some humility."

"Then teach me how. Tell me why you need a physical body."

Shuyin laughed aloud. "You'd like that. You want to hear my story to see if you can pick some weakness in it and me and escape. Not so fast. You are not capable of understanding why I need a solid conveyance. I will tell you this much. I need to get somewhere, to find something to use to solve my dilemma. I can't get there without a set of muscles and bones so ..." He grinned broadly and gestured with a hand. "You are the chosen vessel. Once you have carried me to my destination, I'll dismount and let you loose on the world to continue whining or to destroy yourself as the fancy takes you."

"Then tell me where you want to go and let's get it done with." The living man stopped in the middle of the road and stared at his enemy.

"No. If I told you, you might find some way to interfere. We'll get there, never fear. But I'll do it the way I decide, the safe way."

"Are they dead? The ones I shot? Baralai, Gippal, ... Paine?"

"Aha! There's a mission for you! You can occupy your remaining time trying to find out what happened after you betrayed your friends and followers. Does that catch your imagination?"

"No, this is nothing but fantasy, all of this including the scene at the travel agency." Nooj turned his face back toward the road ahead.

"If this is only a fantasy why do you keep talking to me?"

"Because you answer me and give me something to do with my mind while I walk. Go on; tell me your story if you dare."

The other gave a grudging laugh. "You just don't stop, do you?" They walked on a bit together yet far apart in their respective worlds. "No, Nooj. All I will tell you is this - I loved and we were parted. I cannot regain her but I can take my revenge. It is for that I need your body. You will transport me to the site of my revenge. That's all you need to know."

"Is love of so much importance that you will go to these extremes?"

"Have you ever loved? Aside from your own image of yourself and your greatness, I mean?" Shuyin stared at his companion.

Nooj did not rise to the bait. he knew that to do so would be to play his tormentor's game. "There was a time I felt I loved. But that now seems to have been in another life, another existence. Everything has changed and she is dead."

"So we share that. We have each lost our love to the pyreflies. That should be another thing to bind us together."

Nooj barked a short laugh. "You'd think so. But I have no wish to be further bound to you. If you won't confide your story to me, go away to whatever place you call home. Leave me to work out what destiny I can."

"My home is within your mind. Are you sure you want me back in there, pulling levers and pushing buttons?"

"I really want you gone from my life completely. If that's not possible, I'll take what I can get and solitude is my current wish."

"Very well." Shuyin faded gradually from view, leaving Nooj alone on the dusty road.

They had traveled more distance than the tall man had realized. When he took notice, he saw he was nearing the entrance to the Mushroom Rock Road. So he had gone around the world only to end up where his journey had started? It was here he had fallen prey to the malevolent spirit which claimed to possess him, here he had begun to lose the companions who had supported him during those hideous days when he had tried to become a Warrior again.

He was suddenly very tired and overcome by a sense of futility. There was no longer purpose in continuing and he was apparently unable to stop. Sin had shaped his future; now there was nothing.

The Crusaders would be at loose ends with Sin gone. They might be persuaded to unite to serve some purpose if he could only think of one. His mind felt sluggish and dull as though something was deflecting its usual efficiency. This unresponsiveness might be the reason he had invented the fantasy of the boy Shuyin and let himself be convinced of the meddling of that vile creature.

Nooj forced himself to look at his options. He was not willing to end his life meekly out of a combination of boredom and irritation. Still less was he willing to live, especially now that he was more alone than he had ever been in his life.

He had come to a crossroads and paused. Which way? Did it matter? He did not notice how long he stood pondering. Time was no longer either his friend or his enemy. Finally he pulled himself together and went forward. It was as good a choice as any. The rocky wall to his left, the sea to his right, he walked slowly on.

Without conscious decision, he turned to his left onto the trail leading to the lift. He remembered a quiet spot overlooking the water where he could make a hermitage and plan how to die.

He paused for a moment at the edge of the first rock, closed his eyes and let the despair which was always near wash across his awareness. "Paine!" he cried aloud then turned his face to what future awaited. He had no longer any appointments to keep and Death had no fixed address.

12


End file.
